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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26048320">The Return</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle'>beetle</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Strange (2016), Doctor Strange (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A bridge between the end of the final fight scene and the post-credits scene, Afro-Romanian Karl Mordo, Backstory, But Could be an AU, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Crisis of Faith, Dark, Dissociation, Dissolution, Eroding Sanity, Existential Crisis, Four a.m. of the Soul, Friends to Enemies, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, I warned yas, If you want - Freeform, Loss of Faith, Loss of Identity, Loss of Trust, M/M, Marvel 616 References, Marvel 616/MCU Crossover, Marvel 88?, Maybe for the series but definitely not for this fic, Mental Instability, No hints of a happy ending, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash, Shattered Self-Concept, The Makings of a Supervillain, Trauma, moral crisis, seriously, this might be a series, you know which one</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:42:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,700</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26048320</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>If everything is always bought-and-paid-for and the bill always comes due . . . Mordo intends to finally squeeze the most from his purchases. No matter what.<br/><br/>See tags and notes.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ancient One &amp; Karl Mordo, Karl Mordo &amp; Stephen Strange, Karl Mordo &amp; Wong, Karl Mordo/Stephen Strange, Stephen Strange &amp; Wong</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Return</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Set at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ehETntF6QI">end of the 2016 film</a>, before the post-credits epilogue. AU, if you want it to be but also canon, if you want it to be.<br/><br/>Spoilers for the film and for Mordo’s Marvel backstory. Implied mental instability/dissolution of self. Implied loss of ethics and sanity. Implied future supervillain-status and a bunch of other not-nice things. This ain’t the happy ending you seek, nor does this fic hint at such in any way. If I manage to turn this into a series, however, I'll definitely be aiming for something happy-er. Promise.<br/></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <a href="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi1.wp.com%2Fumtigrenocinema.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F10%2FDoutor_Estranho-04.jpg&amp;f=1&amp;nofb=1%5D">  </a>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>One day, it <em>might well</em> be said that it began—or ended—when Karl Amadeus Mordo, Master of Mystic Arts, turned his back on . . . <em>walked away from</em> what remained of his comrades and fellow defenders of Kamar-Taj . . . the defenders of the soul of the Multiverse.</p><p> </p><p>But now, <em>right now</em>, Karl is simply fighting <em>every mortally wounded and agonized instinct</em> within him. Beating back the destruction and dissolution of self which is scaling the underside of his ribcage to sap and poison and stop the heart of him . . . even as the world he has long known and believed comes crashing down around him, on him . . . in him. <em>Undone</em>.</p><p> </p><p>It takes nothing less than such an existential battle to allow him to walk away from <em>everything</em> he has loved and fought to maintain and protect for nearly three-quarters of a century. Away from facets of that beloved life which are considerably younger than Karl and his best efforts.</p><p> </p><p>Away from his once brothers-in-purpose . . . and in the wake of a close battle with Dormammu. One that had been lost and then <em>won</em> only by Stephen Strange’s use of the Eye of Agamotto to reverse the flow of time—breaking the most sacred of Natural Laws—thus routing Kaecilius and his Zealots, and binding Dormammu, himself.</p><p> </p><p>Now, with the lord of the Dark Dimension gone, and his Zealots with him, Strange and Wong are rather heedlessly jubilant—not surprising, in Strange’s case, but somewhat stymieing in Wong’s.</p><p> </p><p>It is as if neither of them understands the great truth of these things: for every great power used—and every not-so-great power—there is a price to pay. That bill eventually comes due. And the greater the power, the greater the need . . . the higher that bill.</p><p> </p><p>Even now, having said as much only to receive Strange’s most incredulous, most confused eyes and hangdog expression, and Wong’s only mildly grim expression in reply, he senses they will not or <em>cannot</em> see what he sees. Cannot see that the actions undertaken tonight will have consequences none of them will be overjoyed to suffer.</p><p> </p><p>None of them, Karl knows, could calculate the cost of using an Infinity Stone to wrench a promise from a Dark God.  </p><p> </p><p>And as he severs the ties of loyalty, faith, and responsibility between himself and all that he loves—or tells himself that is what he is doing—Karl can feel both their realization that he not only means to leave but is determined to do so. Wong’s grim comprehension and regret is as understated as the man himself. Strange’s gobstruck disbelief is an almost physical force at Karl’s back: ice and fire, anger and hurt. Desperation and . . . that increasingly miserable confusion which is as yet too powerful to allow him to express himself verbally—a feat Karl would have once dismissed as nigh impossible.</p><p> </p><p>Yet, here they all are, and <em>Stephen Strange</em> is at a loss for words. Knocked back and shocked beyond all ability to say. . . .</p><p> </p><p>Anything. Anything at all might be—<em>might have been</em>, Karl will reflect later, with resignation, acceptance, and distant regret—enough to give Karl pause. To shore-up his recently broken moral code and former understanding of his purpose . . . and suspend the complete dissolution of the former and burgeoning, reapprehension of the latter.</p><p> </p><p>To make him want to <em>stay</em> . . . or at least make staying bearable enough that to do otherwise would be unthinkable once more.</p><p> </p><p><em>Anything at all from his friends</em> . . . from <em>Strange, especially</em>, might have been enough.</p><p> </p><p>But that <em>anything</em> is not said. The nothing that fills the growing distance between them, between Karl and what he’s loved and would have once died to protect, is worse than any rage or castigation, shouted out or fought out, would have been.</p><p> </p><p>Karl <em>might</em> have stayed to answer such statements and accusations, to defend himself and his shaken foundations. He might have.</p><p> </p><p>But in these moments there is nothing . . . there is <em>silence</em> filled with the scents of blood and burning, the sight of dark and bright flickering, and the sound of sporadic crashes and screams gone distant as a populace rightly flees. . . .</p><p> </p><p>These are things which have both happened repeatedly and which <em>have never happened at all</em>. They demand <em>nothing</em> of Karl. They ask nothing of him that he could or would give, at this late date.</p><p> </p><p>Earth and Hong Kong are safe—as safe as they have <em>ever</em> been, anyway—and whole. And Hong Kong, at least, sparkles and glitters, boisters and glows like the riotous galactic center fallen to Earth. Street vendors vend, motored vehicles motor. Tourists ooh-and-aah and, much like Hong Kong’s natives, they are <em>alive</em> and enjoying their evening in ignorant bliss. Enjoying a marked dearth of blood and burning, magic and perdition.</p><p> </p><p>The ghosts and demons of a Hong Kong that never was—<em>and</em> that Hong Kong’s final catastrophe—mean nothing to them, nor to anyone else—not even to Dormammu, ultimately. These could-have-beens <em>are nothing</em>. They draw <em>nothing</em> from the natural universe and leave no impression on its memory. They do less, still, to and for Karl Mordo.</p><p> </p><p>Knowledge of all that <em>could have been</em> gives him neither pleasure nor pain, only fosters a weariness that has dogged him for decades. That was once held back by his unshakable faith in the Ancient One, and the Natural Law and purpose she had purported to protect and serve.</p><p> </p><p>Now . . . the bulwark of decades of being <em>Master Mordo</em>, one of many dedicated guardians of Kamar-Taj have eroded completely, leaving whatever chaotic tide waits beyond to wash everything he has worked for out to a midnight ocean.</p><p> </p><p>Nothing matters, anymore—not that anything ever has, it turns out. That it has taken him so long to recognize, acknowledge, and accept such an obvious truth is on no-one but himself. He forces himself to face this as he puts distance between himself and the two most dedicated guardians of Kamar-Taj. At his back, the Staff of the Living Tribunal is cold and quiescent and on his feet the Vaulting Boots of Valtorr feel constricting and far warmer than usual.</p><p> </p><p>He is suddenly aware that he is garnering stares from the locals and tourists, but he dismisses it as his ascetic’s aesthetic and the color of his skin: two uncommon and noticeable anomalies even in modern Hong Kong.</p><p> </p><p>(These are certainly <em>two</em> of the reasons he is <em>anomalous</em>, but the <em>main</em> reasons he has drawn wary and covert gazes is, as well as his harried, wide-eyed look coupled with unintelligible muttering in Romanian . . . the angry, loud, blue-white static electricity emanating from and arcing between his clenching and unclenching fists. And spreading to writhe and crawl over the rest of him.)</p><p> </p><p>He pauses at the mouth of a dank and dim alley, breathing harsh and deep, his fists and form wreathed in kinetic, manifest force. The tension radiating from him is making clothing and hair cling to persons who are a dozen yards or more away from him. . . .</p><p> </p><p>. . . only for the force to slowly release and leach away as Karl stuffs himself and the chaos comprising the core of him in and <em>down</em> from years and years of practice. Stuffs it <em>below</em>. Despite wishing he could give-in to the need to fall to his knees and mourn all that he has lost—all that he had <em>thought</em> he’d had but had not <em>really had</em>—he stands tall and square, with eyes closed tight . . . then, at last, open-open-open.</p><p> </p><p>All ahead of him is darkness. It is a darkness that follows him and only ever gets darker. Anything that might once have given him the light of hope, or held him or <em>saved him,</em> has been tainted by the Ancient One’s lies. By her hypocrisy and betrayal. By Dormammu and the Dark Dimension. By the mad, fevered, frenzied scramble for <em>power</em>.</p><p> </p><p>By the sadly common quest to enforce one’s individual <em>will</em> and way on a largely defenseless existence and its denizens.</p><p> </p><p>By the destruction of that which had given Karl—despite his miserable, cautionary tale of an early life—reasons to adhere to and dedicate himself the Natural Law.</p><p> </p><p>That which had redeemed him from, or perhaps <em>through</em> a purely transactional, give-and-take life of terror, trauma, barbarism, amorality, deceit, and despair . . . of magic, and mysticism gone corrupt and amok, had let him down disastrously. He had yet again given himself wholly to a corrupted ethos, blinded by his need for <em>something better</em>. A contingency that could not be counted upon to happen—perhaps did not even exist. And he had once again proved that, as ever, whether calling himself <em>Baron Mordo</em> or simply <em>Master Mordo</em>, he would always take the worst path . . . all unwitting, even—always let <em>himself</em> adapt to unconscionable compromise as unquestioningly and ruthlessly as is needed to survive. <em>And thrive.</em></p><p> </p><p>Once upon a childhood and throughout his early manhood, he’d had to adapt to and live in a world encompassed by and seen through the lens of the dark, rapacious “principles” of his grandfather and his mother. He had known no world other than theirs from his sixth year until well into his twenties: a world of no love or softness, no loyalty or affection. A world of pragmatic considerations of varying weights and power grabbed for powers’s <em>sake</em> then held to the last for the same reason . . . and nothing else.</p><p> </p><p>Nothing.</p><p> </p><p>Thanks to the Ancient One, he had learned to see that such narrow and short-sighted perception, though quite true and applicable in far too many ways, had also been wrong. Un-natural.</p><p> </p><p>Having been opened to the possibilities of a truly better world, he had come to crave that world like oxygen. He had spent most of his long life—not as long as <em>hers</em>, but far longer than average, thanks to Kamar-Taj and the side effects of using and living neck-deep in sorcery—trying to create and win that world for <em>all</em>. To <em>safeguard</em> it.</p><p> </p><p>It would have been unthinkable to do aught else. Nothing could be of as great an import as that world, come to glorious fruition.</p><p> </p><p>Karl had believed so deeply for every moment of his life since recognizing the possibility of that world, that he had fought for it tirelessly. Only to have all his efforts <em>fail</em>, and the very methods of will and of power expended to unnatural extremes be the tool that had saved the day from more of the same. Everything he had come to know as wrong and everything he had been railing against had undoubtedly worked.</p><p> </p><p>Stephen Strange had fought the fires of lawlessness and chaos with the fires of lawlessness and chaos, and saved the Multiverse from Dormammu’s predations.</p><p> </p><p>For Stephen Strange and his victory to have happened, one of two things have to be unacceptably true:</p><p> </p><p>Either the tenets Karl and the other Masters of the Mystic Arts—even, despite her compromises, the Ancient One—all the way back to Agamotto the Ageless, and perhaps even up to the highest orders of the Multiverse have been utterly wrong for eons. They are <em>not</em> all-knowing, or even wise and knowing <em>enough</em> to predict the need for and eventual existence of a Stephen Strange and his particular skills. Or. . . .</p><p> </p><p>Or this chaos and pain, blood and evil is all part of a plan to which the Masters at Kamar-Taj are not privy, nor are their direct influences . . . there is no good or evil intent at all, merely a conspiracy of conspiracies to keep secrets that either do not matter, or matter more than <em>the countless humans lives and souls</em> being expended on behalf of things they could never comprehend.</p><p> </p><p>In the end, it likely doesn’t matter, Karl supposes. And despite his rage and grief over the Ancient One’s betrayal—her quiet life of unforgivable trespass against the Natural Law which she had touted—Karl cannot bend any of that sense of betrayal and disgust, that disappointment on Strange or Wong. Nor even continue to bend it on the Ancient One, for that matter.</p><p> </p><p>For all her seeming wisdom, in the end she had been more human than not. Prey to the mistakes inherent to that state. One small compromise long ago had surely begot many larger ones, as is always the case, and so her book had been indelibly writ word by word.</p><p> </p><p>At the end of that book, she had been no more and no less than her best intentions and worst nature.</p><p> </p><p>At the end . . . she had been <em>human</em>. And she had paid the price of her actions—but the rest of the world had also had to pay, too.</p><p> </p><p>But unlike <em>her</em> awareness of her own compromises and hypocrisy, both Strange and Wong are misled in their beliefs and blinded by victory. By hope. By general ignorance, relative youth, and buoyant arrogance, in Strange’s instance; and in Wong’s, by a pragmatism which is born not of cynicism, but of gruff, but boundless <em>optimism</em> . . . optimism he would deny to the death, yet which glows as quietly as and with the steady, paced determination of a well-tended if banked hearth.</p><p> </p><p>Misled and mistaken, but not yet hypocrites, they are pure in intention if nothing else. At least with regard to defending the Multiverse.</p><p> </p><p>Like the Ancient One must have once been. . . .</p><p> </p><p>But time will cure them of that comparative purity, and sharpish. For Karl knows that no matter how she had ended, the Ancient One, too, had started out with enough good intentions to pave the entire road to Hell. But each and every compromise along her too-long life had mired her spirit in the Dark Dimension. Had led to her ruin and nearly to the ruin of them all.</p><p> </p><p>So, will these latest and whatever still-to-come compromises by Strange and Wong—<em>most of all</em> by Strange, who acts <em>far</em> too quickly upon having thought far too <em>little</em>—end in <em>their</em> ruin. Perhaps the ruin of all should Strange, with Wong’s tuition and support, achieve his massive mystical potential.</p><p> </p><p>In his ignorance and brash newness, and the awakening of his long-neglected, but clearly expansive heart, there might be no brakes or constraints on what Strange would seek to achieve in pursuit of defense and rectification—as upholder of the New York Sanctum, or . . . or even as Sorcerer Supreme, should Wong demur at accepting that office. Unlike Wong’s sense of restraint, caution, and long-sightedness, Stephen Strange’s sense of the same, as well as a deeper sense of wisdom and deliberation, have not had a chance to grow apace with his knowledge, skill, and power.</p><p> </p><p>And, even beyond Stephen Strange . . . who knows how many other sorcerers there are in this world and others, unknown and unknowing, and one seminal awakening away from activation?</p><p> </p><p>From <em>subversion</em> . . . whether by their own greed, or by mistaken, or purposeful misguidance from others? Who knows. . . ?</p><p> </p><p>Too many . . . too many to count or even estimate. <em>Too many sorcerers. . . .</em></p><p> </p><p>Unheeding and uncaring of the semi-busy Hong Kong night taking him from all he had so recently valued and clung to, Karl does not even step into the alley and out of the public street before he absently creates a Gate with the ease of long practice. From <em>instinct</em>. He hardly even needs to picture his destination. Not when that destination has its anchors in his every <em>blood cell</em> and can lead him hence, left to do so as it is by his tired conscience and shell-shocked heart.</p><p> </p><p>The Gate Karl has brought into being opens onto . . . a field as seen through a wall. A <em>mostly</em> whole section of stone wall with a watch-gap left in by long-ago villagers. Despite the rest of the wall being so fallen-down and useless, this single piece had remained in defiance of time, the elements, and uncaring children in need of stones for mischief. Beyond the irregularly shaped watch-gap lay rolling green hills speckled with many old posts leading up to a distant ridge and the tallish stump of an ancient tree that had likely been sheared off by nature, rather than by man.</p><p> </p><p><em>Beyond that ridge</em> is an open, overcast sky and a gentle incline leading down toward the village that had seen the need to build such a wall between itself and what lay beyond—even if only as a statement of preferences and boundaries.</p><p> </p><p>Karl steps forward, letting that which lies over the threshold of the Gate call him . . . home. Home.</p><p> </p><p>“. . . wait, Mordo—please—”</p><p> </p><p>The voice coming suddenly from behind him—from a city and a world that can no longer exist as it is if Karl is to continue existing as <em>he is</em>—sounds frantic but remote. Negligible and barely familiar<em>. It barely matters at all</em>, Karl tells himself as he strides stolidly forward without fear or doubt or (much) regret. He has always walked alone, even when all about him had been chaos and terror and loneliness. Even when he had been a child too small to understand fully the dangerous forces surrounding him. Even when he’d had no defenses but a mother who did not love him, and a father who <em>might have</em>, but who’d been too obsessed with dark magic and resurrecting a tiny, lost empire to notice his only son in any real way.</p><p> </p><p>For all his life, Karl has never known what to do with true, balanced companionship or even affection and regard—platonic or otherwise, and excluding the student-teacher dynamic. Even on the rare occasions when it has sauntered up and introduced itself by name, Karl has been frozen in his reserve and demurral . . . his doubt that such could ever be meant for him. So, to walk alone in <em>his place</em>, in the home that lives in his very blood and at his core. . . .</p><p> </p><p>“—doesn’t have to be this way—”</p><p> </p><p>That negligible voice is getting closer and <em>fast</em>. Karl closes his eyes for a moment and sees striking, empyrean blue ones shining back at him with hope and expectation, wry amusement and a fragile, burgeoning fondness.</p><p> </p><p>Shaking his head, he distractedly swipes at wet eyes and wetter cheeks as he crosses the threshold from his present, into his past and his future, with ruthlessly open eyes. He automatically de-powers the Gate as he passes through it, stepping firmly onto stunted grass and arid soil.</p><p> </p><p>“—we need you . . <em>. I need you</em>, Mord—<em>Karl</em>—”</p><p> </p><p>In the bright, overcast daylight, Karl closes his eyes again and indulges himself once more, but briefly: he lets the crisp breeze and Carpathian-dry climate settle over him and into him. Lets his first and only home re-claim him and re-name him.</p><p> </p><p>“—<em>please, sta</em>—”</p><p> </p><p>The Gate behind him flickers out of existence in a shower of dying sparks and he . . . has moved well-beyond its memory, to the watch-gap.</p><p> </p><p>Still wearied and numb, unsmiling and unmoved, he’s nonetheless used to running on automated determination from his earliest days. From when all he’d known of the world had been that which crouches beyond this very wall . . . the fearful, subdued, eventually fantastical <em>village</em>. . . .</p><p> </p><p>Were he to continue beyond this wall and its gap, and up the ridge and down the incline—as he had never been allowed in his childhood—he would see that once-fabled and fearful village of Varf Mandra.</p><p> </p><p>The entire, unknown <em>world</em>, to the lonely, sheltered child he had once been.</p><p>Were he to turn his back on the wall, and on unknown Varf Mandra and the world it once represented—of his own volition, now, and unlike his cloistered early life—he would see the reason why the village had built their utterly ineffective wall. To demarcate and hope for the best, rather than to <em>repel, keep back</em>, or even<em> warn back</em>:</p><p> </p><p>Castle Mordo.</p><p> </p><p>Now a falling-down heap but still, as ever it had been, a place where even the haunts and memories sleep uneasily, if at all, Castle Mordo waits. A demesne where even the wakeful therein had moved through their lives as though they had each been trapped in individual entropic, unending fever-dreams.</p><p> </p><p>A fitting home for <em>Baron Mordo</em>, after all, though not for Karl Mordo’s lack of trying.</p><p> </p><p>The Baron turns away from the watch-gap and its framing of the-world-as-known-by-a-half-forgotten-child. Away from the path to the now dying or utterly dead remnants of Varf Mandra. He takes a long, steadying breath to center and fortify himself, and to at last let go of that which hampers him and which he does not need. Then, after a measured breath out, he returns his attention to his present. To a future perhaps worth wresting and salvaging from the past he has long-since denied and suppressed.</p><p> </p><p>He turns his back on the known—and despaired-of—quantity that is the wide world and turns to his <em>first</em> world. To Castle Mordo.</p><p> </p><p>Staring at its broken, slumping, claustrophobic-defensive remains, he senses the weary-resigned acknowledgement and hail of the late Mordo forebears still in-residence. Senses the spirit of the castle itself tremble and shudder at the return of the <em>last</em> of a long line of <em>lasts of the old blood</em>.</p><p> </p><p>As that old blood rushes and gushes through his veins, like a river through the Carpathians, it seems to beat and burn and <em>clamor</em> in response to Castle Mordo’s hail.</p><p> </p><p>He draws nearer, ignoring the bright-hot warning throbs and anxious constriction around his feet—willing, if need-be, to go the rest of the way bare of his treasured relics—as he hop-steps carefully from stone to old, tumbled stone. But though the Vaulting Boots of Valtorr do not cease their klaxoning, neither does the intrusiveness of their warning intensify further.</p><p> </p><p>With what would appear at first glance to be the sprightliness of a young man laying down his cares to return home, the second Baron of Mordo leaps, laughing, from paving stone to foundation stone, and so on. He follows the tumbling, meandering trail of Carpathian bones closer to the main bulk of his denuded castle, feeling even louder than the warning heat from his relic-Boots, the waking thrum of the castle itself. From the ghost of great halls that had been created by manpower <em>and</em> magic.</p><p> </p><p>So much of what the land and wild has reclaimed yet willingly trembles and shudders, twitches and dances at the rallying call of the return of the old blood. It welcomes him whose fate has been entwined with it by generations of blood and magic that are darker and more primal than anyone at any Sanctum or at Kamar-Taj has ever tasted. . . .</p><p> </p><p>By the time Baron Mordo crosses the brief, crumbling wooden bridge leading over the dusty, dried-out moat—in which lay the ancient skeletons of water-beasts to be found <em>nowhere</em> else in this part of the Multiverse—he’s smiling. By the time he touches the castle grounds, proper . . . landing flat and square on the soles of his greatly alarmed Boots, he’s grinning. Relieved and elated and, if one does not examine the scream-bright glitter of his eyes and the tears rolling down his cheeks to frame that manic grimace, carefree.</p><p> </p><p>The castle that had gone to sleep from whence it’d been drawn . . . is waking once more to defy those who would have <em>left it</em> asleep and dreaming . . . and <em>kept it there</em>.</p><p> </p><p>And as the castle is awakens, so awakens Baron Mordo. And the ghosts within castle and lord both fall to deathly, breath-held silence. The demons living below the former Master of the Mystic Arts and former ancestral ruin perk up. They have been waiting even a single chance to slip their muzzles and leashes, to clamor at and splinter the floors that have long barred them from daylight.</p><p> </p><p>With this deep silence and intent watchfulness—inner and outer—comes, at last, long-lost <em>clarity</em>. Comes the ability to <em>recall</em> without the twin vulnerabilities of regret and conscience coloring and corrupting fact and truth.</p><p> </p><p><em>With this clarity and fidelity of recall, he feels a glimmer of a hint</em>. . . .</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>A way.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>It whispers from behind him <em>and</em> from below. From the stark, dangerous days of his youth . . . when desire in any of its varied forms had meant little more than deadly pretends to while away rare clusters of discretionary moments.</p><p> </p><p>Gazing upon the waking Castle Mordo—the only home he had ever acknowledged as such before Kamar-Taj—and the backdrop of sky and Carpathians beyond, the Baron bows his head for a few respectful heartbeats. He hopes his father’s shade does not wander the castle’s broken and caved halls. Or that if it does, the <em>first</em> Baron Mordo knows that his son had done all within <em>any</em> power he would ever have to lay his troubled spirit to proper rest.</p><p> </p><p>As for the ghosts of the First Baron’s murderers . . . the Viscount Krowler and his daughter—the Second Baron’s grandfather and mother, and the First Baron’s father-in-law and wife—each yet suffer their eternities in their shattered stronghold. In every ripped-down stone of Castle Krowler and every screaming tree straggling through its tortured life on that blighted property. In the nightmare-realm where Heinrich Krowler had loomed and plotted the downfalls of so many . . . the First Baron Mordo included.</p><p> </p><p>Now, the land surrounding the former Krowler county for several kilometers in every direction is barren, haunted, and nigh inhospitable. Those travelers unfortunate enough to be passing through the heart of the cursed territory after dark have frequently claimed to hear faint but echoing and tormented cries and, even more faintly . . . sobs. Seeming to come from the earth being traveled and the very air itself, respectively.</p><p> </p><p>Few enough who live nearby are willing to speak of it and those who have passed through on their way to other places never retrace their steps through Krowler Country. Without fail, they choose instead to take longer and less interesting routes. But for nearly three-quarters of a century, the rumors about the eerie and checkered county have proliferated.</p><p> </p><p>Though the second Baron of Mordo would have the strongest claim on the land if he or anyone else were to want it, he has not been back since fulfilling his duty and reaching his goal. It had been enough that he had completed what he had set out to do—that the first Baron Mordo could better find peace, even if the Second Baron never would.</p><p> </p><p>Smiling small and melancholy, the Baron reflects that he has seen, firsthand, what power and will can accomplish when brought to bear with zeal, and a refusal to entertain doubts or anything tangential to one’s goal. And there is no question that the bill for all of it comes due. The <em>only</em> question is this: <em>Is</em> that which one seeks to buy, and for which one will ultimately pay, worth the price?</p><p> </p><p>Once upon a time . . . to obtain vengeance on behalf of a father he had barely remembered and had only distantly known or loved, he had taken to himself a monolithic and salient truth: <em>No price</em> could be too high as long as the goal remained <em>ever higher</em>. Not even his own eternal suffering could have been too harsh a penalty, so long as his father’s murderers had suffered the same or worse.</p><p> </p><p>And <em>had</em> the price of their torment and destruction been his own, he would have happily paid that fee for eternity, then begged the privilege of paying for six consecutive eternities more to keep them there. He had recognized rationally and also as a holdover from his earliest years, that power and will shape existence. Such a correlative would likely never change. And that to have what one wants one does not need laws or directives . . . one needs only the will and the power to make that want manifest. To create worlds from whole-cloth and blood, if need be.</p><p> </p><p>The will and power to make <em>universes</em> <em>bend</em> to the only end one is willing to accept.</p><p> </p><p>In those early years of his adulthood, Baron Mordo had known <em>no loftier goal and dedication</em> than the will to power. The drive to create the world one most wanted. After the Ancient One had altered his path with her compromises and hypocrisies . . . his goals and dedications had only ended in failure. No matter how high-minded and well-meaning, no matter how in-line with her supposedly noble teachings, they had ended in defeat and ruin every time.</p><p> </p><p>Because <em>Master Mordo</em> had never had the will, the power, and the <em>will to power</em> that <em>Baron Mordo</em> had begun cultivating and fueling from before puberty.</p><p> </p><p><em>The bill comes due . . . always</em>, the former master had told his <em>former comrades</em> before abandoning them to their misled devices in the humid Hong Kong night. At least one of those comrades had surely already known or guessed that eternal truth.</p><p> </p><p>The other comrade would likely <em>never</em> learn or accept the greatest constant of the Multiverse. It is this blind-spot, along with Strange’s few—but growing—sterling traits that will make him so <em>very</em> dangerous an opponent. He will rail on against what other, weaker wills consider immutable fate, until he has bent the Multiverse to suit <em>himself</em> . . . or died trying.</p><p> </p><p>Or until he is, himself, bent to suit a <em>greater</em> will and is <em>pushed</em> safely and permanently—irrevocably—beyond all such troublesome concerns. . . .</p><p> </p><p>There is always a reckoning for will and power brought to bear on a goal, yes. These debts owed tend to be called in as a crippling, massive lump-sum.</p><p> </p><p>But taken as payment for the world to be made over <em>exactly</em> as one needs and wants it . . . why, the Baron could hardly expect to pay anything less than <em>everything</em>.</p><p> </p><p>That truth once again acknowledged, understood, accepted, and settled, the Baron, himself, is settled. He knows his first step is to find or create the tools that are lacking: a proper path and a best method, namely. After that, it certainly falls to him to refine his agenda and rearrange the existing opposition’s numbers into something less obstructive. Though, even the numbers of those who <em>might</em> support the Baron’s aims are or will become . . . unmanageable, in time. Inconvenient and <em>inimical</em>.</p><p> </p><p>Rivalrous.</p><p> </p><p>Because there are too many sorcerers, overall. <em>Far</em> too many.</p><p> </p><p>Truthfully<em>, even one sorcerer other than Baron Mordo</em> might well-be <em>far too many</em>. And now that he sees clearly what the first part of his path must be, he has a growing idea of the needed tools for traveling it true. He also better understands what his eventual bill will look like.</p><p> </p><p>He does not need, at this last, to close his eyes to see eyes like the overcast day above, staring into his own, lit by hope and expectation, admiration and—</p><p> </p><p>The price to be paid for the world he needs will come due—<em>can only come due</em> in the form of flesh, blood, and lives.</p><p> </p><p>Perhaps, even, souls.</p><p> </p><p><em>Already,</em> in his sacrifice of the first inkling of the balanced regard, affection, and companionship he has always lacked . . . packaged in the form of a broken-brilliant student with a broken-big heart. . . .</p><p> </p><p>But there will be no time to mourn what has been lost, as has ever been true for the Baron. At the very least, his friends-turned-opposition will not let him take their strongholds without the bloodiest war of attrition they can muster before their very final deaths.</p><p> </p><p>It is here that the Baron feels a quiet-keen pang of regret and railing.</p><p> </p><p>Either of his former comrades left alive would be an even worse <em>too many sorcerers</em> for <em>Baron Mordo’s</em> designs, than any other rogue or unknown talents.</p><p> </p><p>Either of them weighed <em>against any group of ten seasoned masters</em> would still be a worse <em>too many</em>.</p><p> </p><p>Not the smallest scrap of a thought of them must be allowed to linger and take root in those who might come after. Never would the Baron’s long-awaited world be secured until it had been cleansed of all threats and rival ideologies.</p><p> </p><p>So, as he takes the first definitive steps down this new and final path, the Baron acknowledges what the highest cost of saving the world from itself . . . and of saving <em>himself</em> from <em>it</em>, will be. Though a despairing, languishing part of him <em>wishes</em>. . . .</p><p> </p><p>But, no. Whatever else his future holds, Baron Mordo means to do as his maternal <em>and</em> paternal forebears had done: to wrest and salvage his pay’s worth from the past, then spend it in the present to safeguard his desired future. Even if he must squeeze and wring <em>every drop of blood and magic</em> from the Multiverse to do so.</p><p> </p><p>And when the bill comes due, he will pay as have those before him. He will tender what is owed without complaint or regret.</p><p> </p><p>But until that final reckoning, he means to have and hold the world <em>as it should be</em> and see his will be <em>done</em> no matter the eventual cost. Sorcerer by sorcerer, the world will be made <em>right</em>. It will be purged, until Kamar-Taj and her last two defenders are within his purview and the palm of his hand. And then. . . .</p><p> </p><p><em>And then</em>.</p><p> </p><p>One day, it might well be said that the foundation of a new and better world began when Baron Mordo hardened his resolve and turned his back on compromise—on hope of reconciling the world he <em>needed</em> to be true and the world that <em>had been</em> true.</p><p> </p><p>One day, it might well be said that the final hammer-stroke, the end of all that had once been good, had been the ineffectual machinations of a failed and fallen Master of the Mystic Arts. One who turned his back on and walked away from that which he had loved and nurtured, fought and bled for. On those whom he had fought beside, bled with, and . . . loved. . . .</p><p> </p><p>Either way, when speaking of the day when everything changed, they will be speaking of Karl Amadeus Mordo. The second Baron of Mordo who had, like his father before him, reclaimed his past from the unjust claws of history and fate, and used it as both direction and fuel to build the life, future, and world he could no longer do without.</p><p> </p><p>Wherever and however the story of the future goes, it begins today and with <em>him</em>. And though he might not live to see its ultimate end—perhaps having succumbed to his own—his will and his power are going to shape that future. It will belong, in large measure, to him.</p><p> </p><p>In perpetuity.</p><p> </p><p>Now, in this momentous beginning, that future, predetermined or not, waits only for the Baron to accept his role and apply his will. To <em>fight for</em> and accrue the power needed to bring that future-world into being. By whatever tools and methodology get that job irrevocably done.</p><p> </p><p>And he will. Baron Mordo <em>always</em> pays for everything he’s taken. As does everyone, eventually. But he <em>at last</em> means to <em>take</em> <em>everything</em>—and then some—as well, to make that price he will inevitably pay <em>worth it</em>.</p><p> </p><p>The ghosts and memories haunting Castle Mordo welcome their lord and heir with mute whispers and chilly, ashen despair in direct contrast to the Baron’s undentable glee. Below the castle itself—deep in the heart of Transylvania, and the Carpathians partially protecting it—a cadre of now poorly-guarded, utterly untended, and eerily <em>silent</em> . . . <em>things</em> sit patiently in their long-frayed leashes and decaying muzzles.</p><p> </p><p>Their sudden tractability is as conspicuous as it is portentous to the castle’s remembered and non-living inhabitants. As familiar and foreshadowing. Thus, they may be forgiven and excused for quailing, and fading as deeply into eternity as possible.</p><p> </p><p>And Baron Mordo . . . is among his earliest friends once more. He is <em>home</em>. As he steps certainly among the scattered and dug-up courtyard stones of Castle Mordo, he also steps fearlessly among the very things above which it had once been his life’s directive to live. He moves amongst their silently slathering selves, meeting avid and glittering eyes, and crushing the half-disintegrated splinters of floor that once separated him from them.</p><p> </p><p>He is grinning-grinning-grinning, and weeping-weeping-weeping. And—</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>(home welcome home Baron welcome back welcome welcome Mordo welcome to where it always ends welcome to the end welcome to the beginning of the end welcome to the beginning welcome home welcome)</em>
</p><p> </p><p>—despite the burning in his feet and his head, in his eyes and his heart, he feels as if he is <em>flying</em>. No matter the screaming relics made of heated lead shackling his feet. No matter tears of what <em>must</em> be joy streaming endlessly down his face. No matter the wall, its window, and the world all getting further and further to the back of him with each moment.</p><p> </p><p>No matter the pervasive sense of a final twilight hovering and lingering, and waiting to settle over the Multiverse in the wake of an omnipresent sunset that the Baron, at least, had never suspected.</p><p> </p><p><em>(bright is it bright </em>it is <em>bright where you are have the people changed does it make you happy)</em></p><p> </p><p>No matter that whither he looks he can see every star of every universe even though in Romania, it is barely early evening.</p><p> </p><p><em>No matter</em> that, for the life of him, the Baron cannot quite recall why he had <em>ever</em> fashioned a partition, and such a ridiculous partition as a <em>floor</em> between himself and his—past present future world demons bills fate fate fate <em>fate</em>—self, in the first place.</p><p> </p><p>It is in him and on him to defy the future cast—<em>that</em> is his fate. To be destroyed by his fate and in turn destroy his fate. To throw his destiny over that he might fulfill it.</p><p> </p><p>From ethers tragic, he is born again with open-wide eyes and the will to power, the will to tear down, the will to destroy until all has been cleansed and made elemental. New. Free.</p><p> </p><p>And . . . <em>true</em> creation can begin. It can be done <em>right</em>, and for keeps.</p><p> </p><p>That would be worth twice <em>any</em> price.</p><p> </p><p>Baron Mordo will ecstatically pay the bill that comes due for the righting of an infinity of wrongs through an infinity of Multiverses. He will pay and pay and <em>pay</em>. He will laugh and laugh and <em>beg</em> to pay more and more <em>forever</em>-more . . . that the <em>right way</em> might be maintained <em>even a moment</em> longer than it otherwise would.</p><p> </p><p>That it might last until all times and Multiverses eventually go dark and silent, still and cold.</p><p> </p><p>Around him all the wings and towers, rooms and halls that ever were part of Castle Mordo, and part of edifices that predated the castle, moan and groan through levels of the Multiverse that even the Baron cannot <em>yet</em> sense. They sound like what little he remembers of his father’s melancholy muttering. They sound like his mother’s distracted disinterest. They sound like the Viscount’s assessing avarice.</p><p> </p><p>They sound like all the things that had lived under the floor, and which no longer have leashes and muzzles to slip, only a ramp up to the very surface of everything—</p><p> </p><p>“I am the last,” he tells them, soft and sad and once again very tired. They walk beside him, ascending levels of the Multiverse even as he descends. Even as he is drowned and crowned in full dark without hope of a trans-dimensional sunrise.</p><p> </p><p>He can no longer see or sense the stars above. The backs of his eyelids are noon compared to the empty firmament of the Multiverse whirling overhead.</p><p> </p><p>Within him, something is shrinking and shriveling and being rendered to less than its essentials. Being rendered nonexistent.</p><p> </p><p>“I am the last of a <em>long line of lasts</em> and master of this nothing-place,” he tells those who once lived below him. Their eyes glitter and flash up at him, knowing and amused. They swallow him whole, and advise him in whispers, as they do:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>(we ignore the sky yet the sky cannot ignore us)</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Attempting to unravel them even as he is unraveled by them, Baron Mordo wades into the ruined remains of his family and his history—deeper into below;</p><p> </p><p><em>(we tear down and begin again </em>again and again<em>)</em></p><p> </p><p>into the above-fallen-under;</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>(we are all that is left to you)</em>
</p><p> </p><p>into his past and present and future;</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>(we echo)</em>
</p><p> </p><p>into his fate and its destruction;</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>(we are indivisible)</em>
</p><p> </p><p>into the final sunset;</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>(we are the shadow in which false light all light is lost)</em>
</p><p> </p><p>into darkness everlasting with neither sun or star or kindly satellite;</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>(we ignore the sky)</em>
</p><p> </p><p>into;</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>(yet the sky cannot ignore us)</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>END</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>[PROMPT]:</b> <a href="https://img3.pillowfort.social/posts/c47fe7ceffd4_wolfgang-hasselmann-EnJR40aGYig-unsplash.jpg">15 Minute Fics, Photo Friday #88</a>, as well as the Smashing Pumpkins songs “<a href="https://genius.com/The-smashing-pumpkins-the-end-is-the-beginning-is-the-end-lyrics">The End is the Beginning is the End</a>” and “<a href="https://genius.com/The-smashing-pumpkins-the-beginning-is-the-end-is-the-beginning-lyrics">The Beginning is the End is the Beginning</a>.” Inspiration from the music and lyrics.<br/><br/>This fic turned into more than a fifteen minute jaunt. And I’m also actually working on a chaptered Strordo sequel based on the same image challenge and this fic . . . a chaptered Strordo sequel with a happier ending by far, I hope. Cheers!<br/><br/><br/><br/><b><span class="u">Thanks</span>:</b><br/><br/>To anyone giving this a read (and hopefully a comment and/or kudo :-).<br/><br/><br/><br/><b><span class="u">Resources &amp; References for this fic</span>:</b><br/><br/>This scene in the film, not necessarily this clip: "Doctor Strange (Mordo, "The Bill Comes Due")." John Hathaway, Youtube. [0:26] A short clip that exemplifies the difference between correspondence theory (Morod [sic]) and pragmatic theory (Strange) of truth. July 3, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ehETntF6QI<br/><br/>Chinet.com<br/>Genius.com<br/>Google<br/>IMDB<br/>Marvel.fandom.com/<br/>Marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/<br/>Wikipedia<br/><br/><br/><br/><b><span class="u">Powered by</span>:</b><br/><br/>"Smashing Pumpkins -The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning." [5:34] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59g5R8rwqpY<br/><br/>"Smashing Pumpkins: The End Is The Beginning Is The End." [5:14] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69Yk6IccL0<br/><br/><br/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDZSuw00OZ3YkoHxjR_GR7Tpm6C6Wwg83">Strange Days</a>: The Playlist<br/><br/><br/><br/><a href="http://beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr.com">TUMBLES with the bug</a>! And <a href="https://www.pillowfort.io/beetle-comma-the">PILLOWFORTS with the bug, too</a>!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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